Cool, so he would know Lt Col John "Johnny" Murdoch Cooper then and might have been around for Oman.
You really need to ask him about navigation, from a Bushcraft point of view, the SAS navigation course is supposed to be the best in the world mainly because it is done in Malaya taught by natives.
It might (
) be an interesting discussion to try and work out which came first a survival or E&E kit. The WW2 airplane survival kits were E&E kits and in fact I would think any miltary kit has to lean towards E&E.
If you think about why give up room to a beta light or torch in a survival kit?
It is always interesting to hear the stories of how a weapon came into being. Krambits are allegedly hair grips of all things.
I might even have it somewhere however I always remember an article in Survival Weaponry and Techniques about self defense which talked about learning to use staff weapons because it would be the most obvious pick up weapon.